Is there Windows Phone 8.1 API to refer? This is because I want to develop the Windows Phone 8.1 application, but I don't know where to refer the API, since the Windows Phone 8.1 an 8 have a big different, so I can't refer to the Windows Phone 8 API.
There is two sets of APIs available on Windows Phone 8.1
Windows Runtime (MSDN), all APIs with a phone icon on the documentation page is available on WP8.1. This applies to the "Universal App" project types. Many of these APIs are shared with Windows Store applications (aka. Metro or Modern applications), allowing you to have the same code-base for both Windows and Windows Phone applications.
Silverlight (MSDN) applies to Silverlight 8.0 and Silverlight 8.1 APIs. There's no specific distinction on MSDN for 8.1 only APIs.
MSDN also have a mixed list of the two above for What's New in Windows Phone 8.1 (MSDN), primarily targeting the Windows Runtime features.
I would personally recommend writing Universal Apps (Windows Runtime), rather than sticking with Silverlight, unless you have a good reason, such as a VoIP application, or the wish to remain backward compatible with 8.0 users, while taking advantage of the new 8.1 features.
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We had a situation where we wanted to build Windows Phone app with minimum compatible version Windows Phone 8.1. It makes uses of VOIP calls over 3G / 4G and Wifi.
I am unable to find whether Windows Phone 8.1 has full support for VOIP calls or not. Can anyone redirect me to right documentation or guidance if WP8.1 supports VOIP?
Please check this below link for VoIP capabilities of Windows Phone 8 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj206983(v=vs.105).aspx
I'm trying to develop a VoIP application based on these solutions:
https://github.com/DoubangoTelecom/boghe & https://github.com/BelledonneCommunications/linphone-wp
Check these. I think it does.
ChatterBox-VoIP-WP81
Upgrade calls from cellular to VoIP in a Windows Phone Silverlight 8.1 app
understanding-and-using-voip-support-in-windows-phone-8
Windows.System.UserProfile.Lockscreen is not available in the WinRT API for Windows Phone. Is it possible to programatically modify the lockscreen background of a windows phone device from a winrt app by some other means?
No. LockScreen providers are in the list of Windows Phone 8 features for which there is no Windows Phone Store equivalent. They are available only to Silverlight apps.
I've been working on a Windows Phone 8 app, which I now want to change to be Windows Phone 8.1. How can I do this?
Should I create a new Windows Phone 8.1 app and copy all my existing files into it? Or is there an automated way for me to upgrade the existing solution to 8.1?
There are two ways to do that:
like in comment - right click on oyour project and you should see Retarget to Windows Phone 8.1
or you can open Properties window of your project and the in dropdown box Target Windows Phone OS version you can choose Windows Phone 8.1
In every case the VS should ask if you are sure to do that - it's one-way operation, so it's worth to make a backup of your solution. As WP8.1 has backward compability, in most cases there shouldn't be any problems.
Some clarification for the followers:
As WP8.0 apps are Silverlight, after retargetting it will still be a Silverlight app but WP8.1 (some new features and enhancemens).
Thought, if you want to retarget to WP8.1 Runtime, it's a totally different thing - it's a different type of an app, different API and more. You will have to port it manually. Note that not all features from WP8.0 are yet available in WP8.1 Runtime - here is a good article about that.
We have an app written for iOS and Android. How we are thinking over supporting it for some Windows platforms. I can see there are three modern mobile Windows platforms at now:
Windows 8
Windows RT
Windows Phone 8
As I understand, Windows 8 and Windows RT differs only in that former is for Intel and latter is for ARM. But what about Windows Phone 8? If we port our app to Windows 8 (and Windows RT), would it run on Windows Phone 8? Or vice-versa? What is relation between these platforms? What percentage of smartphones/tablets does run any of these platforms?
The Windows platforms:
You are right, Windows 8 Apps and Windows 8 RT Apps are (in the most common cases) the same so you usually don't have to worry that your Windows 8 App does not run on a Windows 8 RT device.
The Windows Phone platform is slightly different. You can reuse very much of your code from the Windows 8 App but most controls lay in different libraries and some behaviours change between these platforms. By now!
Some days ago at //build conference Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 8.1 and much has become easier!
Cross platform Windows development:
If you start developming for mobile Windows platforms as Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone now you should definately take a look at the new Universal App Model.
Since the upcoming Windows Phone 8.1 Update, both platforms share the same code base. With the Universal App Model you can share your code between both platforms and only have to define different layouts for the GUI. You can compile your project both for Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 then, which is really cool!
Both the Windows 8.1 Update and Windows Phone 8.1 Update are available for every Windows Phone 8 respectively Windows 8 device. So you don't have to worry to exclude useres when "only" developing for the latest version of both platforms.
Percentage of smartphones/tablets users on these platforms:
If you use the Universal App Model there is no question whether to develop for Windows 8 OR Windows Phone 8. You automatically develop for both. Users will love you for that!
For more information read this blog post.
Hope that helps :)
Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT both support Windows Store Apps without any additional work. You write it once, publish it to Windows Store, and it's downloadable on both OS's.
It used to be that you needed to develop a separate app for Windows Phone 8 because it has a separate app store and essentially a separate OS (although parts of it are shared with W8). You could share some of the core logic code but the UI parts needed to be different since WP8 has different resolutions and different controls. And you'd compile different packages depending on your target OS.
But it's a very recent development that supposedly you're able to now develop once and target all 3 of these OS's, although I have not tried this yet. You can find more details here:
http://readwrite.com/2014/04/03/microsoft-universal-windows-app-store-developers-unified-code-base#awesm=~oCPndkNofb18zX
Based on this article, windows phone 8 has Trident (mshtml).
So, how can I add the reference to it in a WP8 project?
You can't. Remember that Windows Phone runs in a sandboxed environment and third-party applications do not get low-level access to system resources.